


Hôtel de l'Aube

by sharks_lemons (lemonsharks)



Category: Original Work, The House of the Rising Sun - Dolly Parton (Song)
Genre: 1950s, Banter, Bathtub Sex, Child Abuse, Enthusiastic Consent, F/F, Female Friendship, Friends With Benefits, Friends to Lovers, Implied/Referenced Abortion, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, Implied/Referenced Dubious Consent, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Implied/Referenced Underage Sex, Masturbation, Masturbation in Bathroom, Not Suitable/Safe For Work, Not songfic but rather fic set in the universe of a song, Oral Sex, Other, Rough Oral Sex, Sex Work, Tenderness, Vaginal Fingering, fear grows obedience like corn but defiance like potatoes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-31
Updated: 2019-05-31
Packaged: 2020-04-05 06:39:39
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,531
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19043194
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lemonsharks/pseuds/sharks_lemons
Summary: Two unlikely women, tempered and quenched like steel, find one another in a whorehouse in 1950s New Orleans.Alternately: theFancy/House of the Rising Sun (Dolly Parton)slow dance remix.





	Hôtel de l'Aube

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Rubynye](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rubynye/gifts).



> I missed signing up for Jukebox2019 this year but that never stopped anyone from surprise giftfic!
> 
> There is probably some triggery shit in here I missed in the tags; take care if noncon-adjacent content is distressing for you.

Sallah ain’t had a night off in just about two years--and the nights she didn’t work she can count in bruises and scars. Bruises from Jock, who wants her pretty and keeps his big hands off her face. Scars from Daddy, who comes for money twice a week and don’t leave ‘til he’s counted out the bills, one by one, lickin’ the corner of each and slippin’ inside his money clip. 

Sometimes Daddy kisses her cheek and thanks her for takin’ care of him like he couldn’t take care of her when she was little, stays and talks about the weather and Jesusor complains about politicians and taxes and his bookie. Sometimes he picks up whatever’s nearby and heavy to throw, or takes his fists to her ‘til she’s bleedin’ somewhere and he’ll never, ever tell her just what she’s done wrong. 

When she'd been fourteen she got up in Daddy’s face and dared him, told him to just come out and _hit her_ already and … he did. 

“Didn’t know what I expected, there,” she tells Liddy, and it gets a laugh. 

She remembers when Daddy hocked the tiny golden ring her mama left her, nickel showin’ through from all the times she rubbed on it. Stone was real enough, though. She’d asked about it a month or so later and then asked to go to her mama’s family, who Daddy knew but she didn’t, and, well. Daddy’d told Jock to keep her inside lest she brown up like burnt toast, which tells her more than she ever knew about her mama. But _my mama’s family’s probably part black_ wouldn’t take her very far in New Orleans. Just about _everybody’s_ mama’s family or daddy’s family’s part black around here.

Sallah started out sleepin on the floor of Liddy’s room one night when Jock threw her out of the brothel for mouthin’ off to him, but she sleeps in the bed with Liddy now. 

It’s a close fit with the two of them, but Liddy smokes Virginia Slims, not dope, and they each take home a little more of their pay by sharin’. The door closes and locks--that’s more than some of Jock’s other girlfriends get, even if he does hook them up with what they need. 

Jock says she and Liddy probably wouldn't fight so good if they were fucked up, anyway, and sometimes Sallah wonders if that might be better. But she don’t need a dealer takin’ a cut out of her on top of Jock and Daddy. And of course, Madame Rémy, who owns the boarding house right behind the Hôtel de l'Aube and always knows somebody who can spread you out on the kitchen table and get rid of your problems if you need him to.

Liddy’s twenty-four but she looks about half that, with warm brown skin and eyes that don’t show the circles of her long nights. She gets herself out of the way when Daddy comes around and she boasts about how she don’t got no one here to bother her later--and cries some afternoons over how her family’s all out Houston-way. Close enough to run back home to, but no one notices when girls like them disappear, and, well.

There’s always somebody or other up to kill a couple of whores off the interstate. One John told her it’s like shootin’ deer without a license while he rutted into her from behind; she couldn’t unfreeze ‘til he pulled out and slapped her across the ass.

“I got shit for a life but I’ll sure take it over bein’ dead.” Liddy says, and Sallah can’t help but agree. 

“Hear, hear,” she says. She rifles under the bed for the fifth of cheap gin hidden away there and takes a swig from the mouth of the bottle, then hands it over. 

They fuck sometimes, after slow, boring nights or when one or both of them need to set their own terms. Liddy’s older but Sallah’s been at the Hôtel longer, and if they ain’t precisely friends or lovers, well, they’re somethin’. Slender fingers in her shaved-bare cunt and warm, wet lips on her neck ain’t nothin’ like the first time. Jock’d handed Daddy a clammy fifty dollar bill and then shoved his thick, stumpy cock in her mouth; the image of it’s still seared behind her eyelids. 

_I was thousand years younger than I am now_ , she thinks as she takes the gin bottle back. Tonight she _needs_ to set her own terms. “Bet I can make you come, no hands, standin’ up in the shower,” she says with a wicked grin. She picks up Liddy’s shower cap from the seat of their one chair and flicks it at her like a rubber band.

“Oh, you are _on,_ ” Liddy says. She rolls her eyes but also laughs and finishes strippin’ down.

It ain’t busy around Easter like it always is over Mardi Gras; she’d only got two customers last night and Liddy hadn’t had any.

Cleanliness is a point of pride between them, and there ain’t so much as a spot of toothpaste on the faucet. The private bathroom costs extra. It’s worth it. 

Wearing nothin’ but her shower cap, Liddy pulls the flimsy curtain all the way back and sits on the edge of the old claw-footed tub, then spreads wide for Sallah’s inspection and fiddles with the faucet. Water always takes a while to warm up, with a boiler too small for their boarding house. 

Sallah strokes two finger sup from Liddy’s cunt-mouth and around her clit. “You’re dry as a stale biscuit,” Sallah says.

“Asshole,” Liddy replies with a snort. 

She flips Liddy the bird and sets her mouth to work on her thighs. She works her hands in hard circles up and down Liddy’s calves and ankles; Liddy dances in pasties and a merkin and high-heeled sparkling shoes even when there's precious few around to watch and fewer still to tip, and she’s muscled from it. Strong and lean and coiled tight. She could spend hours on those legs, easily so, ‘til they both both fell asleep drunk from wanted touch.

Sallah licks up the crease between Liddy’s thigh and her cunt and Liddy tangles her long fingers in Sallah’s curly hair, which she takes that as a sign. 

She pulls back and looks up to meet Liddy’s eyes. “How’s the water?”

“Lukewarm,” Liddy says, and yanks hard on her hair.

Sallah tests her with her thumb; she’s wet inside but still tight. She leaves her legs and kisses up her stomach and around her breasts, treating her with licks and nibbles but only sucking when she’s told to. Liddy makes little noises, guides with hands and half-formed words and jutted hips. Moans and screams pinched faces are for customers. 

Steam rises up around them as she eats out Liddy’s navel like she will her cunt in a few moments. She rolls Liddy’s tight little nipple between the fingers of one hand, and works her own clit with the other, shuddering as her body fills with empty spasms. 

Liddy turns the old shower on and leans back so the hot spray wets her face; it bounces off onto Sallah, too, and she works her way back down, hard hands and hard mouth.

Liddy’s voice turns strangled before she forces mewls and whimpers into words, “Fuckin’ _fuck_ me already!” 

She takes two of Sallah’s clean fingers easily, then three, four, soaked from back to front. Sallah spreads her soft bare cunt-lips with her thumb, hard pressure on one side of her clit, enough that Liddy swears, again, with gravel-voiced demands.

Sallah buries her mouth in her cunt, licking and pressing; rubbing inside her with curled fingers, stretching those hot wet walls that already had already started to flutter. Liddy releases her head and then grabs on again, better purchase to hold Sallah’s mouth against her cunt, Sallah’s nose pressed flat against her mound. She sucks Liddy’s smooth, impossibly soft, impossibly hard clit against her tongue, as she clenches again, and again, and again around Sallah’s fingers. Liddy makes a staccato sound like a creaking door as morning sunlight filters through the bathroom window, then relaxes, and eases her ass and then the rest of her body down into the chipped porcelain tub.

Sallah joins her; they pass a sliver of lavender soap back and forth like a marijuana cigarette, and their legs tangle as they clean one another’s bodies. Sallah turns the water off when it starts goin’ cool; they towel dry and wander, slowly, back out to the room and the bed. Liddy throws a window open; the air’s as thick inside as out.

“You’ve gotta get outta this,” Liddy tells her as she pops off the shower cap and ties her sleepin’ scarf over her hair. She lays face down with her forehead resting on her arm and a thin, infinite gap between their bodies. “Can’t keep whorin’ forever,” she continues, voice softening, thickening, with deeply needed sleep. 

“Not if we wanna--” Liddy yawns. “--live to get old.” 

Sallah lays awake watching the dented brass alarm clock tick away seconds of her life for a long, long time. 


End file.
